NIH Director: ‘Bizarre’ That Mask-Wearing Has Become a Political Issue

NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins expressed how stunning he finds it that mask-wearing has somehow become a political issue when it’s an important part of the coronavirus response.

Chuck Todd asked him about comments from the head of the CDC on masks and how President Donald Trump is just flatly at odds with him.

“How do you at all get us rowing in the same direction if you have that high level of a contradiction?”

Without referencing the president directly, Collins remarked that it’s “bizarre” mask-wearing has become political:

“Imagine you were an alien coming to the planet Earth and looking around, looking at the scientific data, going from various place to place and looking to see who’s wearing masks. You would be totally astounded, puzzled, amazed. You’d wonder, ‘What is going on here? How could it be that something as basic as a public health action that we have very strong evidence can help seems to attach to people’s political party?’ For starters, could we just walk away from that and say, ‘This is about all of us’? We’re Americans. We’re pretty good at rising to a challenge, a crisis. We’ve done so before in wartime. This is not a war, but in a certain way, it is, against the enemy which is called the virus. And that virus is very sneaky and stealthy. And our best chance is for all of us to get together, and do the right thing, and stop fighting so much about the divide between different political perspectives, which is just getting in the way.”

After talking about potential progress on a vaccine and the clinical trials, Todd asked Collins — who is technically Dr. Anthony Fauci’s boss — whether anyone at the White House has asked him to demote or fire Fauci.

“Nobody has asked me to do that, and I find that concept unimaginable. And I am amused that everybody’s calling me Dr. Fauci’s boss because his real boss is his wife,” Collins remarked.

You can watch above, via NBC.